In recent years, defense related corrosion costs have been estimated to be more than about 7% of the total annual U.S. defense cost with about 20% of the estimated corrosion related costs involving scraping and repainting steel structures. Because of the staggering costs stemming from corrosion of steel, there is a tremendous need to develop multifunctional coatings that can outperform traditional coatings. For example, the production of water-repelling hydrophobic surfaces has huge opportunities in the area of corrosion inhibition for metal components, and also in the area of chemical and biological agent protection for clothing, and many other applications. Many different approaches have been tried for achieving corrosion resistant materials. For example, a two-layer-coating can be formed on a metal component to make a corrosion resistant material. The two-layer-coating can include a hydrophobic bottom layer and a hydrophobic or super-hydrophobic top layer used to prevent water and/or salt ions from penetrating the surface of the coating. However, most superhydrophobic coatings contain fluorine which can be environmentally unfriendly and may not be cost effective to manufacture.
Thus, there is a need to overcome these and other problems of the prior art and to provide robust and inexpensive superhydrophobic coatings that does not contain fluorine.